Hellboy: Sweeter Than Anything
by princessebee
Summary: Comicsverse. In the aftermath of Hellboy's death, the three women he loved reflect on their relationships with him. HellboyxAlice, HellboyxKate, HellboyxAnastasia. Some sexual references.
1. Kate: Never More Than A Dream

_This is set 100% within the comicsverse. At the very least it will be helpful to have read __**The Storm**__, __**The Fury**__ and __**An Unmarked Grave**__. _

**Never More Than A Dream**

Alone in a field of lilies Kate Corrigan swayed, her gaze blurred by tears that refused to fall. Her arm dropped to her side, her cell phone dangling from her fingertips.

The world was in chaos. Countless lives lost and countless deaths impending. England lay in ruins.

Bruno… Bruno had broken it off with her.

And Hellboy…

Hellboy was dead.

Grief and pain erupted within her as finally the full import of it all descended and the last of her control cracked. She collapsed onto the bench where just moments ago she had sat with Alice – a woman she had never met before, a woman who had told her the absolute unthinkable – the woman who had stood witness to Hellboy's death – and sobbed.

It had been years since she had cried like this. Without restraint or reserve. Though there had been plenty to cry about, she had always held back from surrendering herself fully to the emotion. She feared that if she succumbed to it, it would overwhelm her permanently in its immensity, stand in the way of performing her job effectively – or at all. And she'd promised Hellboy. Promised him she'd take care of everything.

But if she couldn't cry now, at the end of the world and with the best friend she had ever known gone, irretrievably gone, then there would be no good reason to ever cry again.

Around her, the golden lilies continued to flower, blanketing the grounds of the Church in a scented expanse of fragile beauty. Kate gasped and sobbed, gulped in deep breaths and dashed at the veil of tears clouding her eyes so that she could gaze out at the shimmering field that effortlessly bloomed amidst the rubble and ruin.

"_Hellboy baptised this land with his blood."_

Alice's voice with its Irish lilt drifted into her memory as all around her the lilies glittered and blossomed, a display of transcendent magic that should've left her touched and elated. Instead she recalled that day in Austria, the last time she had seen him:

"_Flowers growing out of my blood?"  
"You never told me about the flowers."  
"I just heard about that one myself."_

Without realising it, Kate hugged her arms about herself, her head bowing down, her heart a bruised and swollen knot in her chest. The lilies grew about her feet, the delicate scallops of their petals forming cups that caught her tears. Kate's shoulders shook and she gritted her teeth against the tide of her grief. For a long time she sat in that virgin garden and gave into the pain and sorrow – perhaps not just for all she had lost that day, but for all she had suppressed for the last twelve years.

The last time she had cried like this it had been in Hellboy's arms. Not even Bruno had seen this side to her and now he never would.

Finally, the flow of tears stemmed, sheer exhaustion bringing them to a shuddering halt. Kate sat up, pushing her hair back off her face, wiping at her cheeks, breathing in great shaky breaths as she calmed. The hollow ache of her loss did not abate and she knew the rein on her emotions would buckle again soon enough, but she also knew she would maintain her control once more. There was little other choice, in the wake of all that there was to face. She had to have it together, now more than ever. Hellboy might be gone from this world, but she would keep her promise to him nonetheless.

Kate sat back on the bench and looked about her. The cemetery grounds were deserted, carpeted in soft golden flowers, gleaming against the iron-grey of the stones that clambered in jagged rows towards the dismal sky. It was beautiful, silent and still and suddenly comforting. In that graveyard, far away from where she had called home, her heart broken twice over, she felt as though Hellboy were with her and for a moment her heart was soothed.

How long had it been now? Two years – or three – since she had come home to her apartment in the BPRD compound after a case to find a message from him on her answering machine. She had stood there in the dark, coat still on, keys clasped in one hand, coated in the mud and muck of the mission, listening to the voice she hadn't heard in ten years. That old familiar voice, deeply rumbling, raspy from a lifetime of heavy smoking. It had hit her like a freight train to hear it again and she had slumped against the wall as emotion overwhelmed her.

Hellboy had never been fond of communication technology, far preferring the immediacy of face-to-face conversation and even still he was taciturn. Even when he'd poured his heart out to her it had been brief and to the point. That message was no different as he said in his brusque, straightforward fashion that he wasn't sure if she'd got the letter he'd sent a couple of years earlier, he was sorry not to have contacted her sooner and that he hoped she was well, that Africa had been nice but he hadn't had such a good time since and that he expected to be beyond contact for a while. But she could tell, from so many long years of intimacy, that something terrible weighed heavily upon him and she worried dreadfully about what had befallen him in those intervening years – and what was yet to come.

The machine had gone silent for a long moment, only the faint crackle of static indicating he'd still been on the line, and she'd held her breath and waited.

His last words before ringing off had wrenched her heart:  
"God, I miss you, Katie."

His voice had cracked, tinged with a desperation so raw she'd balled up her fists and slid down on her haunches to hear it. She'd never heard him sound quite like that before – so lost. Lost, somewhere out there in the world and she had no idea where she might find him, or even if it were her job to do such a thing.

Kate knew now it had not been. That had fallen to Alice. Immediately upon meeting her, Kate had realised what Hellboy had been to her – and what she had been to him. That they had been lovers had been as clear as the startling anguish in Alice's storm-blue eyes. And Kate was grateful for that – grateful that Hellboy should've found some happiness and some peace. Of anyone she had ever known, Hellboy deserved love – he inspired great love in those around him, loyalty and fierce passion as well, though he himself had never believed a woman could love him enough for it to survive the reality of what he was. She was glad he had finally given it a chance again and been rewarded.

But there was a little regret as well. After all, only hours before they'd been dispatched on the Hunte Castle ruins mission, she'd been in his bed in nothing but panties and groaning into his mouth as his left hand brought her to shuddering orgasm. As she relaxed back against his right arm, languorous in the afterglow of her bliss, she'd smiled adoringly up at him. He'd smiled back with equal affection and played with her hair as her own hands had started to work on him… she loved him, she'd known that. But they'd never talked about what their relationship meant, and had never put it into formal terms. Later, as the mission brief came in and they'd got dressed, she'd mused – not for the first time – that they should finally take it all the way. Not that the act of penetration would somehow grant more validation to their love-making – as that was what it most surely was – but she desired to feel him move inside her, almost too much to bear. It was by her wishes it had not already happened, ostensibly because she was too intimidated. But as time passed she began to awaken to the realisation that was not it at all – that as ridiculously traditional as it seemed, so simple an act stood as a barrier for her between the informality they carefully maintained and wholehearted commitment. If they went there, then it would demand the formal recognition of what they felt – and that scared her most of all. Because she could also see that Hellboy's soul was provoked the more he learned about his origins, burdened by the elusive secrets that hovered just beyond his reach – and that it was making him restless.

She knew he would be leaving soon. She just never guessed how soon.

Many times after they'd said goodbye on the Austrian hills, not even able to kiss lest the Bureau learn of their secret relationship, she wished she had feared less and dared more. Wish she'd known him completely, at least once, and been able to say she'd been his girl.

Now she never would.

She was sorry that Alice had gone. She felt that this woman, who Hellboy had loved, should be invited back to the Bureau and kept safe from the chaos that wracked the world, in testament to his memory. But she also knew that Alice would not have agreed – she had some self-ordained sense of purpose and would not be dissuaded from that path. Kate had no idea where Alice had gone to, how she had so quickly disappeared or how she had come to believe all that she had told Kate, but there had been no mistaking the serene resolve she had about her, despite the vast enormity of her grief.

No matter how brief their encounter, Kate felt a sense of strong kinship to the redhaired woman – who appeared so startlingly young though they were close to the same age. Their love for the same man bound them on some level. As she mused on that tender and abstract connection, she was struck with another realisation and her next duty became apparent to her.

Wiping away fresh tears that had sprung unbidden to her eyes, Kate lifted her phone and dialled the Colorado headquarters. She was patched through the main desk to Intel and when Agent Sheridan answered, Kate cleared her throat and spoke, her voice tremulous and not at all like her own:

"I need you to get me a phone number for a Doctor Anastasia Bransfield. Last I knew she was working for the British Museum in London. I don't care how long it takes, just find me a way of contacting her. Thank you."

Kate disconnected then rose unsteadily to her feet, pocketing her phone in her suit jacket, brushing her hair back with both hands, feeling the swollen flesh beneath her eyes. Above the sky was thunderous and heavy but the graveyard seemed illuminated by the soft glow of the lilies, enveloping her still in the sense that Hellboy watched over her. She would tell Anastasia about Hellboy's death. He had loved her first and she deserved to know.

And then she would go on with her job.

As Kate made her way to the cemetery gates, the lilies rustled about her ankles, seeming to sway gently from her path instead of being trampled underfoot, their petals soft as silk. At the gates she paused and glanced backwards across the golden field, suddenly reluctant to leave, to step out of the bower that surrounded her like an embrace – to lose the sensation that Hellboy was close to her, just on the other side of the veil that separated this world from the next. Crouching, she plunged her hands into surprisingly yielding earth and came up with one perfect flower. Up close she could see how the petals were striated with darker threads of gold that seemed to catch what dim sunlight struggled through the clouds. Kate's heart thudded painfully against her breast bone and she struggled once more against the flood of tears that threatened to spill forth. She kissed the petals tenderly, without a care for how girlish a sentiment it seemed from a fifty-three year old woman, and left, cupping the fragile flower lovingly in her hands.


	2. Anastasia: Brief As Summer Or Spring

**Brief as Summer or Spring**

Anastasia Bransfield stood up with a short _whuf!_ and dusted her hands off on her khaki twill trousers. At sixty-two years of age, her lifetime of outdoor activity on archaeological digs had kept her very fit, but her knees were creaking more and more every time she knelt down or stood up.

As was her lower back for that matter, Anastasia wryly mused as she straightened up and stretched against the strain on her lumbar, lifting one hand to push errant strands of grey-streaked redhair back beneath the brim of the patched, worn, stained and battered Yankees cap she still sported, even after all those years.

"Great work, everyone. Let's call it a day."

There was a smattering of applause around her as the crew began packing up for the night, fitting tarps over the partially revealed finds and boxing up those artefacts that had been fully excavated and documented.

"Age before beauty, kids," Anastasia quipped, waving a couple of eager young volunteers the go-ahead to pack up the brushes and other tools she'd been using on the perfectly-preserved altar – complete with its sacramental paraphernalia – she'd so meticulously unearthed whilst she moved towards the ladder that would take her up out of the temple and onto the beautiful Greek coastline.

The clouds were bruised pink and purple in the dying rays of the sun and the Aegean Sea glittered gold and white. Anastasia strode towards the cliffs and lifted her face to inhale the crisp brine on the breeze, enjoying the satisfaction of another day's work finished.

At her age, Anastasia was more than entitled to stay put in Paris – where she currently worked for the Louvre – and work on the restoration of artefacts brought in from the digs. But she remained as committed to the work as she ever had, unable to detach from what was – in her opinion – the most intimate and significant part of uncovering the secrets of the past. And after all the work that was put into preparing for a dig – the many hours of painstaking research, the relentless applications for funding, the careful assembling of the team – to be denied the thrill of actually being the first to put her hands in the earth was an unbearable thought.

Besides, with all that was happening in the world at the moment, staying connected to that which had given her life direction and purpose seemed vital.

Anastasia was gazing across the sea, musing idly on which local restaurant she should enjoy that night, when David, one of her co-workers, approached her with the satellite phone.

"Sorry to interrupt, Stacie – call for you. She says it's important."

Anastasia took the phone with a murmured thank you and the flicker of a confused frown. Of course the tragic events that had razed England had reached them even in their remote location but she had no living family there anymore. Unless the museum was calling to say the funding had been pulled, she couldn't imagine who would be calling her with important news.

"Hello, this is Anastasia Bransfield."

Many hundreds of metres below, dark waves that were azure by day crashed and split against the rocks.

"Anastasia? Hello, my name is – I don't know if he ever mentioned me to you – but my name is Kate Corrigan. I worked with Hellboy at the BPRD."

"Kate!" Anastasia was more surprised than ever. It had always been her who had called the BPRD, not the other way around. "Hello, yes – yes, Hellboy mentioned you many times. How can I help you?"

Funny how they had both immediately called each other by their first names without hesitation, even though they had never spoken before. By the time Kate Corrigan was working at the BPRD, Anastasia and Hellboy had been broken up for several years. But whenever they had been reunited – always when some ghastly supernatural force was at work on one of Anastasia's digs – they had been too wrapped up in each other to talk much about the rest of their lives – even as they maintained a carefully constructed façade of friendship.

But when it had come to Kate, there had been more to it than that. Anastasia was perceptive and sensitive and furthermore knew Hellboy inside out, and the clumsily-evasive way he had glossed over the subject of the academic-turned-agent led her to suspect there was something between them. Apart from that time in Tibet, Hellboy and Anastasia had never really come close to resuming their romantic relationship – with all its physical fringe benefits – but she'd known better than to push the subject anyway. Their feelings for each other had never truly abated or been resolved and opening up about other people they may have been with seemed too awkward and painful a subject. But Anastasia had still been curious – a little happy for him – and a little sorrowful as well. It had taken her a long time after Tibet to reconcile herself to life without him. But she wanted him to be happy.

"Anastasia - "

Kate hesitated and strangely, the clarity of the satellite connection seemed to close the distance between them. And in the weight of that pause, Anastasia knew something was wrong.

Her heart was suddenly pounding and she was breathless.

"Tell me," Anastasia's voice was flat and on the horizon, the sun melted lower, the sky darkening in streaks of indigo. "Just tell me."

"Hellboy – " Kate's voice cracked and Anastasia heard her swallow hard and all of a sudden a much younger voice inside her was whimpering: _no, no, no, no, no!_

"Hellboy is dead, Anastasia."

Anastasia did not even feel her knees creak as she dropped to them on the grass.

"But he can't die," she whispered and somehow that younger voice had taken over her own.

"But he is dead," Kate's voice had dropped as well, even and steady but Anastasia sensed the enormous control that underscored it.

In turn it gave her the strength to resist the horribly intense grief that threatened to undo her.

"How?" she asked, and now her voice was hoarse.

Kate laughed, a short, humourless sound. "Saving the world."

"Of course," Anastasia replied with wry sorrow and in the silence that followed, they understood each other completely.

"There was a woman," Kate said after a few moments during which Anastasia sadly watched the last of the sunlight glimmer and wink out below the edge of the earth, leaving only a sky streaked purple and black endlessly into the stars. "Her name is Alice. She was with him at the end."

It was at once a balm to her pain and a further astringent. The stars across the horizon blurred and Anastasia pressed her eyes shut. "I'm glad to hear it," she said truthfully. "He deserved that."

"He did," Kate agreed.

There was another pause in which she knew Kate was struggling against her emotions as much as she was. Anastasia opened her eyes and released the tears that had welled, two streaks trickling down her cheeks. Behind her, the last of the packing up had been done and the workers were departing.

"Thank you for telling me," Anastasia managed, the sea breeze icy without the sun, pushing her hair back off her neck.

"Of course," Kate's voice was exhausted, dull with sadness. "You know, if there's anything I can do – "

Now Anastasia laughed in the same short, wry way that Kate had. "He said you were like that – always looking out for everyone else."

She sensed that Kate was smiling, just a little. "And he said you always understood everyone."

Anastasia smiled back, even as the tears slipped out faster and fiercer. "Take care of yourself."

"You as well. I'll let you know if there'll be a memorial service, but the way things are now – "

"I understand."

"Goodbye, Anastasia."

"Goodbye, Kate."

They disconnected and Anastasia let the satphone drop to the grass, her other hand flying up to her eyes as sobs shook her shoulders. By now she was alone on the cliff face, the night around her deepening, encroaching like a shroud of mourning, heavy and damp. Her heart ached in protest against the news, feeling as though it might cleave in two and leave her emptied and dead on the Grecian coast.

Hellboy had come to her when he had left the BPRD, twelve years earlier. En route to Africa and passing through London it had occurred to him to look her up and for once she had been in town, inbetween digs for the British Museum. She hadn't been hurt that she'd been a second thought – they'd last seen each other in nineteen ninety-one, ten years prior and there'd been a lot of water under the bridge since. That he'd wanted to see her once again and delayed his plans to do so was immensely touching and as they'd clattered down the streets of London after he surprised her at the Museum, she was once again moved by how easily the old comfort and familiarity between them returned.

Anastasia had upgraded flats since they had first met in the final year of the seventies, and the furniture had changed too. But it was suddenly as if no time had passed at all as they clinked glasses of wine over Indian takeaway and sat on cushions on the floor of her living room, side by side with their thighs touching, listening to Tom Waits' _Heartattack and Vine_ on vinyl – an album that caused her cheeks to flush frequently and Hellboy's gaze to dart away, so intertwined was it with memories of their most intimate moments. The sense of rightness was intoxicating and the attraction between them was as strong and tempting as ever. Against the wave of it, Anastasia forgot her insecurity over the deepening crows-feet around her eyes, her increasingly grey-streaked hair and her heavier hips. What they had shared went beyond age – and endured no matter how much time passed.

Though it _had_ been a lot of time – he hadn't aged at all of course, but he seemed different. More careworn and sombre, his shoulders heavy beneath the weight of some burden. He'd always been introspective and gruff, but he'd also had his own sense of playfulness and wry humour – mischief even. That seemed to have given way to a contemplativeness tinged with a profound gloominess. It worried her.

She'd queried gently and he'd told her a little but she could tell he held far more back. She didn't push; it was his decision and she knew he would have his reasons. Plus, he'd always tried to protect her from the worst, in whatever way he could. The old-fashioned macho man inside him just couldn't help it.

That thought had prompted her to smile fondly, close the distance between them with curled fingers stroking his rough cheek. He had reacted strongly, starting and turning his head away and the tension between them was palpable. She was aware that she was growing aroused despite herself, that being close to him again for the first time without some horrible otherworldly threat hanging over them made the usual danger of their lingering passion seem inconsequential. She had a lot of regret for the past – it had not been her decision for them to break up although she had agreed when Hellboy told her that's what he thought was best. She knew he had resented her not fighting harder for them but he had never known how bitterly she wished that she had afterwards. The truth was he'd blindsided her and she'd reacted as much out of self-defence as anything else. The love they'd made that night they'd said goodbye made her weep with its tenderness and in the dark she felt his own cheeks grow damp and it had broken her. She'd held him so tight against her it was as though they had fused. But in the morning he'd been gone.

And every time they had seen each other since, they had kept a careful distance.

"I'm going away for a while, Stasia," he'd told her. "I don't know where but I know I won't be back for a long time. Just gonna take it as it comes. See what answers come up along the way. It's time. Hell, it's overdue."

There had been a finality to his resolve, something that frightened her. Perhaps she knew that she would never see him again. Whatever it was spurred her into action she had so determinedly held back from before.

Hellboy did not protest when her lips found his. The taste of them – tobacco and cloves, the tang of the wine and his own heady masculine essence – was as familiar to her as her own heart and a powerful aphrodisiac, and she'd groaned softly against him in response to the flood of memories. Hellboy had quickly taken over, cupping her head in his large left hand and gently pushing her mouth open with his lips. Their tongues had darted together, slipping easily back into their old favoured rhythm as though it had been only hours, instead of years, since they had last made love.

To touch him again in that way suffused Anastasia with a fervour she had forgotten she was capable of. The hardness of his well-defined muscles against her own soft body, the scent of him filling her senses, the strong, sure way his arms embraced her, holding her close against him – and the things she would never tell him, knowing they would rouse his self-consciousness – like the flick and lash of his tail, the rough stone of his right hand and the embers burning deep within his yellow eyes – all of these things drove her wild with passion. A passion he matched as he upended her onto the rug and quickly tore her clothes from her, baring her body to his desire.

This was why they had always been so careful, of course, no matter how tempted they had been. Once in each other's arms again it would be impossible to separate and that was something they simply couldn't risk – not with all it had cost them the last time.

But it was different that time – she knew that he would not stay, that whatever it was calling him onward was stronger. And that meant she could finally be as selfish as she had often longed to be. Even as much as it would hurt in the morning. Even as much as it hurt to know their time to be together had well and truly passed.

Their passion that night exceeded any they had shared before and had left Anastasia trembling for days afterwards. Any time she recalled it in the years to come she would be struck still and breathless. There had been no regret, even as they had said wistful goodbyes the next day. It seemed finally they were resolved.

Of course she had had other relationships – both after they broke up and that last farewell – but her work had always intervened and somehow the timing never seemed right – and her feelings never strong enough to fight for it. And nothing had ever compared to what she'd had with Hellboy.

Anastasia shook away the memories that overwhelmed and wiped her face with the back of one arm. She couldn't believe he was gone – really gone. He was supposed to outlive her – outlive all of them, most like. It had been a source of comfort to her, knowing he was always out there somewhere in the world, doing what he did with the same blue-collar ethos that had so charmed her that first time they'd met. The world had felt a little safer with Hellboy in it.

To say nothing of the fact that with all her heart and soul she'd wanted the best for him, had wanted him to find happiness. Of anyone she had ever known, he deserved it and while it had not come to be she would be a part of it, she hoped that this woman – Alice – had been. She hoped that he had been happy with her before he died.

The realisation she had accepted it made her erupt with grief once more and she stared out into the night, studded with stars winking indifferently from the heavens, wondering where he was, where his spirit roamed – and if he could see her from there. Anastasia sobbed openly, allowing her anguish to be swallowed up by the endless cold scope of the sky. The world could not be so cruel as to obliterate him completely from existence, surely. There had to be somewhere where he continued to endure, or there was no justice in this world or the next.

Anastasia clutched at her breast and bowed over, oblivious to the ache in her back against the agony of her loss. She did not know how much time passed while she let her grief pour out but as her tears ebbed to a halt, she came back to herself and realised that she was cold, that the excess of her emotion had given her a headache, that her knees were throbbing and that there was a bottle of ouzo back in the room where she was staying.

Painfully, she got up, scooping her baseball cap from her head before smoothing back her hair and replacing it. How many times had Hellboy ribbed her about that cap? That hadn't prevented him leaping down a hazardous rockface to retrieve it for her that time in Scotland though…

Smiling through the last of her tears, Anastasia turned back towards the trail that led to the village. What now? Besides spend the night with her bottle of liquor and her memories, that is...

She was restless. It had never been her way to stand idly by when there was work to be done. And it didn't take a genius to link what had happened in England just days earlier with Hellboy's death. The dig could do without her for a few days, the principle work complete. She wanted to go to the land where Hellboy had met his end and see what might wait for her there. That felt like the right thing to do. Perhaps there she could do some good, and in doing so say her last goodbyes to the man she had so loved.


	3. Alice: Sweeter Than Anything

**Sweeter Than Anything**

Alice Monaghan drifted slowly along streets paved in cobbles, her arms crossed over her breast, her head bowed. The village was silent and still, cast in shadow by the looming clouds. After the storm that had savaged England, the air was slightly humid and still crackled with faint energy, the final reverberations of the battle in which the world had been delivered from eternal damnation and her greatest love had sacrificed his own life for the bargain. The ghost of a wry smile hovered on her lips for a fraction of a second. Hellboy had been strangely Catholic, in his own way. She wondered if he had noted the parallels – but she thought probably not. He was too humble.

She had not meant to leave Kate so suddenly. Not at first. But the moment came and she had followed it, as she had been following the guidance of an unseen hand that seemed to press upon her very heart with its directives since her first anguished tears had reluctantly ceased.

At first it had felt like she would cry until her heart stopped. Alone in the long-deserted and ruined tavern where Mab had worked a glamour until Washbrook – if that was really who it was – came to claim Excalibur, her grief had poured out of her as a storm to rival that which had razed the Kingdom to the ground. On the battered and age-pocked stairs she had wept and choked and railed with her loss, her hands clawed into her hair, her body shuddering and trembling with its enormity. Her heart was a twisted knot of pain that thudded so heavy against her chest it seemed it would rupture. For a long time she was in absolute surrender to her sorrow and if it so happened that she choked on her sobs and perished, she would go willingly.

It did not come to pass. Instead, after a countless age her cries slowed, then stilled, leaving her sniffling and hiccoughing. The tears still fell freely but she was no longer wracked with sobs and was able to sit up and wipe her cheeks and regard her decrepit surroundings. In the aftermath of her pain, it seemed she saw every detail with startling clarity. The brush and moss that seeped through the wooden slats, the cobwebs that threaded the walls as though holding them together, the bruised and broken furniture and the mouldering drapes which hung jaggedly across shattered glass windows like shrouds, all of this seemed to stand out in crisp relief, so vivid it was almost unreal.

Queen Mab's crown glittering amidst all that ruin, golden despite the gloaming, as though it were illuminated from within.

Alice gazed upon that crown from where she sat, one arm slung across her knees and the other resting on the grimy stair, her shoulders hunched and the sensitive flesh around her eyes stinging bitterly as her tears tried in cold and sticky streaks. Is this what her faith had brought her to? So unquestioningly she had believed in Mab, believed in Her guidance and Her wisdom, had trusted the path that She had set them upon. It was Mab who had set Hellboy to find the truth about his heritage and to lead him to the sword – who had intimated that path was the only one through which he might truly change his destiny.

Never had She said his life may be forfeit in exchange.

Alice had crossed her arms over her breasts, her hands clenched into fists, the crown becoming a golden haze as she recalled those final horrible moments in which her love, her champion, had been killed right before her eyes – and in so savagely cruel a way, just when it seemed he had triumphed and come through the whole ordeal okay despite what Mab had intimated to her on the battlefield that had set her hurtling to find him, desperate and frightened. But he'd vanquished the dragon, its smouldering corpse broken before him, he turning to her with a fond greeting, shrugging it all off as another day's work in the bag. Right then, when it had seemed nothing was lost after all. When she'd been inches from his arms and hours from his promise of a life together in America. How could fate play so cruel a trick? How could Mab?

Alice had sat and gazed unseeing at the crown, her heart expanding into a yawning cavern that consumed her as she realised that the minutes and the hours and the days ahead would pass by without Hellboy. That her life had been emptied of him and that now there was only a void left where he had been that seemed to overwhelm all else.

Bitterly she recalled how absolutely she had trusted that in the end all would be well. Hellboy would come, he would fight and he would conquer. The world would be safe and they would be together. She had accepted it as fact. Believed it as fervently as she believed in God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the glory of Queen Mab and the Dagda.

And Hellboy had needed her faith. He had come to her lost and hurting, reluctant to accept what was coming or his own place in it, distrusting himself. Believing in the worst of himself. But guided to her by a higher force. And it was not just because she could lead him to Mab. Mab Herself had given Her message to Alice because She knew Hellboy was seeking her out of his own accord. He had been wandering in the darkness so long and she had been the light that had illuminated his life.

Alice had not understood this straight away. She could see he was burdened heavily and weary of heart when he showed up on her doorstep, his face sombre and grim. But his goodness to her was so blindingly clear she had not imagined he could so deeply doubt himself. Not until those confessions whispered into her hair in the darkness of cheap hotel rooms, after their bodies had exhausted themselves in union. How deeply they had moved her, made her heart swell to hear them and ache to soothe him. But not even the worst of his fears could sway her faith in him and she felt him bolstered by that and was glad of it.

It had taken them a lot longer than two weeks to get to Bill in the end. They stopped every night, even when they could've pushed through, to take advantage of the discovery of each other. It was far more than just the eager, hungry sexuality of any new relationship. There was an urgency to it, as though they had to be together as much as possible, as though every second together was unspeakably precious and there was a clock ticking down on the time they had left to learn each other by heart, inside and out. She had not thought much of it but simply went along with the flow, as she was wont to do, intoxicated by him and the thrill of being by his side on this most important of journeys. Spurred on by the greatness of his need for her matched by her own hunger for him, by the sudden and powerful beauty of what they shared, she had not thought to dwell on why the urgency had been so profound.

Now she knew why.

That glimpse of him at Dagda's funeral, her first in forty-three years, had taken her breath away. She remembered him as a hero, _her _hero, who had brought her back to her parents when she was still just a baby; who came to visit and coaxed her out of her shyness by carrying her on his shoulders across the fields that surrounded her parents' cottage and gallantly wearing the daisy chains she wove for him. But she had been just nine years old when he had visited last and though the memory of him never faded she had been entirely unprepared for the reaction she would have as a woman to the sight of him.

And when she had finally opened her door to him and saw him looming on her front step, enormous, fearsome and with the kindest eyes she had ever gazed into, her heart had constricted and she'd fought a wave of giddiness. By the time he had crossed her threshold and entered the pokey kitchen, she had been in his arms and on the table beneath him a dozen times – in her imaginings.

She hadn't tried to hide it from him. That wasn't her nature. He was more reticent, hesitating for what she guessed were a dozen reasons. She supposed she should've realised that being big and red and a demon would have made him shy about getting involved with human women, but by then she'd seen so much of so many realms it hadn't really occurred to her that it might be an issue. She desired him and could see he desired her. Desire that became love so quick it left them reeling. That was enough, by Alice's reckoning.

And she brought him around to her point of view soon enough.

Those weeks together were the happiest of her whole life.

Alice shivered in the crumbling remains of the tavern as bittersweet memories rushed through her mind, bringing with them a fresh wave of anguish. She sobbed again and squeezed her eyes shut against the pain. That he had been snatched from her when they had just found each other was too much to bear. It had all come to pass as she had believed – Hellboy had saved the world – and yet she had been cheated.

Feeling every bit her fifty-two years of age though her outward appearance belied it, she pushed heavily onto her feet, wiping away the tears on the sleeves of her battle-grimed jumper. The floorboards creaked beneath her tread as she approached the crown laying discarded on the countertop. A sudden icy wind gusted through the thatched roof where it had long ago caved in and Alice shivered, wrapping thin arms around herself, standing in the centre of the room with the lichen and shrub brushing at her ankles, looking sorrowfully upon that crown and its many indifferent faces. All that was left to say any of it had happened at all.

She had nothing left of him.

Nothing left to remember him by. His body had turned to dust and scattered right before her eyes. She had been cheated even of a corpse to mourn over and bury, which was surely the least that any hero deserved. Surely the least that any grieving widow deserved.

How could it come to this?

The only time she had feared – truly been frightened – was when he had cast off the sword and rejected what she believed was his destiny to lead the army of noble dead. But she had a reverence for the ancient ways and prophecies that he did not share.

But that was Hellboy's way – to forge his own path and to hell with the rules. And after all, it was just one part of why she loved him so deeply.

Still, she had feared for him.

When it became apparent that was how it was meant to be – entrusting the sword to her so that she might decide what it was meant for, fulfilling Arthur's promise that her life was bound to it – she had been reassured. The old prophecies were never immediately understood and the fae spoke so often in riddles. She had convinced herself that if her destiny was entwined with the sword, then Hellboy must carry it for surely he was part of her destiny.

But he was also the champion of man. It had fallen to Washbrook to face Nimue's army – and for Hellboy to face Nimue alone. At the end, as throughout his life, alone.

He had fought to save the spirit of man. Fought to buy the world a little more time, as Mab had said on that blood-soaked battle field, as the sky smoked red around them and the air was thick with the stench of death. And he had delivered it, on the very cusp of absolute annihilation. He was the champion of man. She had been his witness. And now, if all that Mab had said to her would come to pass, a new beginning was at hand... for the world and for mankind.

But what now, for her?

She had waited her whole life for this. It was done now. Without Hellboy, she did not want to go on. Without Hellboy, she had no reason to.

Alice pushed strands of long red hair behind her ear and sighed, memories haunting her with their sweetness. He had loved her hair so much; loved to play with it and stroke it, admire its colour in the light, bury his face into it and inhale her deeply. He had taken to brushing it for her of an evening and then again in the morning after it had been tangled once more by their night's exertions. The ritual of it was comforting and sensual for them both. Now he would never do it again. Alice sobbed and bit her lower lip, only to recall how he had done the same during kisses so passionate they had been left giddy. Every inch of her body was inscribed with memories of their love. Even the freckles that spattered her skin had each been kissed by him with only moonlight to guide his path. There was no part of her that had not been entwined with Hellboy but there was no solace in the recollection of the lifetime of memories they had crammed into weeks. It could only be torture because his absence was as absolute as their intimacy had been.

Alice heaved and clutched at her heart, remembering the sight of him amidst the heat and smoke on the top of that trembling castle. Magnificent, his coat hanging from him in threads, and a viscera-smeared blade clutched in his left hand – the same hand that had startled and enchanted her with his tenderness – and his red skin gleaming through the soot and the sweat that coated him. His tail in a stiff arc, the powerful arms that had embraced her so lovingly still tensed from battle and – damn it all – one precious golden eye gone. She'd barely had a chance to marvel that he was so unscathed, that one eye was nothing to the wonder that he was still standing, strong and beautiful, when Nimue's vengeful spirit had risen behind him…

Alice recoiled from that memory, her neck snapping back as she violently turned, hugging herself tighter. She did not know what she was going to do now, but it hardly seemed to matter. There seemed little point to any of it. Her part in it all was apparently complete, finished when she had passed on the sword and Hellboy's empty husk had shattered on the castle paving stones. Without him she couldn't imagine a future let alone what it might hold.

She looked towards the bay window where she had stood with Hellboy and gazed out upon the army of noble dead, gathered there to await his command. The window itself was shattered now, the tables and chairs upended. Mab's glamour had been so powerful. Alice could still remember the warm dry air of the pub and the scrape of wood against wood as they had taken their seats, the tang of the hops in her beer and the fragrance of the bergamot in Hellboy's tea as they had sat together in fraught silence while he had pondered his next steps.

Alice now gazed once more out of the shattered panes of glass, her brow stricken as she wondered what in all of heaven and earth could possibly be left for her.

From the corner of her eye she caught the glint of gold. Turning her head she saw Mab's crown, seeming to wink at her in the dim light.

Inquisitive, she drifted back towards the bar, her arms crossed over her body. The crown seemed faintly luminous as she approached, the usually expressionless faces that peaked it seeming to variously appraise and taunt, entice and rebuke her. To anyone else it might appear a curious trick of the light, but Alice was too familiar with the realm of faery. The crown had been worn by Queen Mab, murdered by Nimue, whose spirit had passed now forever into that realm. It was speaking to her.

She did not know what she had expected. A flash of light perhaps, a vision that painted itself across the sky, the crown to levitate and all the little mouths on those engraved faces to open and speak at once.

Instead, it was nothing more than a rush of knowledge so wondrous it brought her to her knees, her eyes wide and her lips parted in awe. As fresh tears streaked her cheeks, her eyes shone with new hope.

And she knew what now was meant for her – what had always been lying in wait for her, at an end which simply rounded into a new beginning.

When she had left the tavern, it was to find the woods glittering with golden lilies.

She had waited for Kate at the chapel that Father Bill had moved to when his other had been destroyed. She wept for Hellboy as she waited, as she had done many times along her journey and knew she would do many more times to come, perhaps until the day she died. Her grief had not in the least subsided though her purpose now also filled her with joy, a strange mix that only intensified her focus.

Everywhere that she travelled she witnessed the evidence of Hellboy's sacrifice and it at once offered her solace as much as it devastated her. His death had not been in vain, the blood he shed had given birth to the last garden on earth – but he had still been taken from her and she felt his absence keenly, as she always would – for the man who had held her close in brawny arms and kissed her lovingly, who had made her laugh and feel exactly right in the world no matter how odd she was, for his scent and his taste, the way his chest vibrated beneath her cheek when he spoke and his tail flickered at her hip. For the kindest and most compassionate heart she had ever known and the fearless but humble man who had always been a reluctant hero. For all that he had been on this earth and by her side, a demon who defied his destiny.

But she had not been cheated after all.

As she made her way aimlessly along the village streets, a sadly sweet smile played up Alice's lips. She had no destination in mind but she trusted that this new Eden would provide that which she needed. Perhaps Kate and the BPRD could have offered it to her, but for now it was enough that she had told them of Hellboy's death. She had imparted to Kate as much as she could, but there was one thing yet that she wanted only to belong to her for a little while longer.

Her part was not yet finished after all and the task before her was as immense as could be conceived – yet also the greatest of blessings.

Though it was still too early to feel the child within her kick, Alice nonetheless could swear she felt its stirrings and her heart lifted. Her hand drifted to the belly which had only just begun to swell and she stroked it gently, smiling even as her tears began anew. In his progeny, Hellboy would be always with her. Through their child he would live on, and she would have forever the living manifestation of their love.

Alice wandered on, towards a horizon that blazed with the fire of golden flowers and the future which held the promise of new life.

**ooo**

_Thank you for reading! Read on for Author's Note!_


	4. Author's Note

**Author's Note**

Thank you for reading!

This story is set within my own continuity established in:  
_- The Desperate Kingdom of Love  
- Is This Desire  
- As Close As This_

You can find all those stories through my profile page! You may like to read them to enhance your reading of this story as they work to further establish Hellboy's relationships with all three of these women.

Of course, the progression of events and timelines depicted in these stories may be completely contradicted by the canon stories over time but at the time of this writing they fit into what has been established. I tried to keep most other detail fairly ambiguous so it won't become too non-canonical if things are further covered in the comics (eg: Alice travelling to find Kate).

Anastasia Bransfield is a canon character who was Hellboy's girlfriend from 1979 to 1981. She was created by Christopher Golden and appears in _The Lost Army _and _The Dragon Pool_.

Kate Corrigan has never officially been stated as a girlfriend of Hellboy's but there is a subtly implied element there and many fans feel the relationship was more than friendly.

Alice Monaghan, of course, has been Hellboy's girlfriend since _The Wild Hunt_. I feel the signs are indicating she may be pregnant with his child but again – this may be contradicted in the canon soon enough.

This story, like my other Hellboy fanfics, is named after a PJ Harvey song.


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